Previous stop: Berlin!

We left Berlin early in the morning to travel next to Leipzig, where our first performance would be. That’s right, we’d rehearsed three times and we were going to sing in public. Our big set-piece was the Bach motet Sei Lob und Preis mit Ehren, but we also had the (slightly more difficult, particularly in the orchestral reduction) Mendelssohn cantata Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten. These two selections in particular were significant for this performance.

Anyway, this was the first of many bus rides that we took, and of many that I fell asleep on. The countryside wasn’t so interesting that it could distract me from jet lag and the stress of traveling (I had very little to worry about, really, and I tried to worry about as little as possible, but travel is still stressful to humans including me).

I’m not even sure where this was, but cool bridge bro.

The entrance to the Leipzig zoo. This was after arriving in Leipzig around noon and doing our third rehearsal, and then picking up a tour guide who began with taking our bus around town to see some of the historical sites that couldn’t be easily reached on foot from the old city centre. I’m trying not to post too many bus pictures, as many of them turned out to be complete garbage as you might expect.

We saw a lot of construction/restoration going on, which means the local economy is doing well; apparently it’s really difficult to find living places though, even though a lot of the buildings are sitting empty, because they’re still trying to figure out who owns which buildings even this long after the Soviets pulled out, and they can’t rent them until the legal work is done. Or something like that.

It gave me the feeling that I want to come back in 10-20 years (assuming we haven’t all died of nuclear war and/or global warming) and see how it’s changed! Assuming I remember clearly enough just how much construction there was now, by then, haha.

Here lived Schiller and wrote the [text of] Ode to Joy in 1785.

For whatever reason (I forget), when Germany reunified, they decided their government would be in Berlin but their Supreme Court would be in Leipzig so here it is!

Majestic.

This bad boi is the ‘new’ City Hall. You can see the tower from quite a ways away, and it’s really distinctive.

The National Library! It looks like a book. :doctorseussemoji:

The Monument to the Battle of Nations, constructed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of when Napoleon was defeated in 1813.

Going inside cost money, and we only had a little while to sightsee, so I just climbed up the outside.

This is as high as I could get and it was still only about half-way up the whole structure. The pool is supposed to be of tears for everyone killed in the battle. If you look into the distance, the spire-ish thing on the left is a Soviet star monument.

East German crosswalk signs are really cute! The little guy is called Ampelmännchen and he was in East Berlin too. Apparently he’s really popular and has a lot of merchandise. I like his little hat.

We ended the bus part of the tour in front of Oper Leipzig.

In the square opposite the opera is the Gewandhaus (concert hall). Also a really sweet 18th century fountain covered in mostly-naked people and mythical creatures. I don’t remember if the tour guide didn’t really explain this one, or if I just wasn’t within hearing range (when she wasn’t amplified, she was a little difficult to hear).

Gewandhaus is very reflective.

Noted on a nearby building.

It looks like a church, and it is a church on the end, but it’s part of the University of Leipzig.

We went into it as part of the tour to the next spot. Inside are the memorial bits taken from the old church that used to be on that spot.

We then were taken down one of the main shopping streets in the old city. Very German architecture.

But very modern stores.

This was the old town hall at some point, just beyond it is a market that still bustles – at this time, it was largely a farmer’s market, with fresh vegetables, meat, cheese.

At this point we hung a hard left into one of the many ‘passages’ through the city blocks, like each block was a small mall. Anyway, this one was significant because in the basement was a famous cellar-restaurant that was used by Goethe in his novel Faust, and there was resultingly a lot of Faust statues and paintings and memorabilia around. The main course was pork with dumplings and red cabbage, and it all tasted very strange to me. Not really a fan of pork at the best of times, and the serving was very large, so I couldn’t finish it. The appetizers were exquisite, though. The dumplings looked like potatoes, but they most certainly were not.

The real attraction: St. Thomaskirche, where Bach used to work. At this point my camera konked out of battery.

So I used my phone camera instead. How nice it is to have a slightly newer phone with a slightly more responsive camera! (my old phone died permanently about a month before this trip.) The clouds were a bit less dramatic irl but hey it looks cool. It was a very old-looking street, really. I was informed that it’s been updated since Bach’s day, you know, as the locals kept up with fashion, but it still looks terribly old and traditional to me.

Bach statue in the plaza on the south side of the church.

The most important selfie I’ve ever taken (and it’s blurry lol)

The back side of the Bach statue, because organ!

Then we went to our hotel, which was on the outside of town, and I discovered an interesting feature that was in several of the hotels we visited on this trip – there was a slot in the wall by the door in which to stick the keycard, and that would allow the occupant to use electricity while in the room. No card, no electricity! Save power when the person is out! But you therefore can’t leave your electronics in there and expect them to charge while you’re out.

The next day, we returned! Mendelssohn’s statue is in front of the church! More selfie! Mendelssohn is of course important to the revival of Bach’s music, but he himself also lived and worked in Leipzig for a time.

The interior, looking up to the altar and Bach’s grave.

The interior, looking towards the 19th century organ and the gorgeous ceiling. The Bach organ is over on the right, and it looks a lot more modern because it is, but it’s in proper Baroque style so you can actually play Bach’s music properly in Bach’s church. Because Bach.

The gold swirly symbol on the front of the Bach organ is his monogram, JSB. On the other side of the church are stained glass windows including portraits of Bach and Mendelssohn. There’s also a mini-museum containing several string/percussion instruments from his time period. I didn’t get a good picture of most of this, because the lighting wasn’t very good.

Then we performed, and after like 3 pieces my camera was out of memory so I had to stop using it again. It became a high priority to find a new memory card, but I didn’t right away so cell phone pictures will have to do. Anyway, I was playing on a Casio keyboard that was amplified, because some random Canadian pick-up choir isn’t important enough to use The Big Organs. We’re really fortunately that we knew the right people to get a performance here organized at all! At least the Casio did a reasonable organ impression. Apparently the choir director happened to be in the church later at the right time to hear an organ lesson, which I wasn’t there for, but he dragged the young organist out so I could meet him, haha.

I can’t remember if this is the front-side of the Thomaskirche or the church nearby. Anyway, after the performance, we had another rehearsal right away, and then turned loose to sight-see!

This was not the only small metal model of a famous landmark that I saw on the trip; I think it’s a great idea. There’s labels in Braille so that blind people can not only feel the entire building, but know which parts are which. The glass structure on the left is the Thomaskirche gift shop; there I bought a red t-shirt with the first manuscript page of the Partita #1 on it, and some postcards. They had a Playmobil figure of Martin Luther and I was tempted to buy it lol.

Tiny Bach statue!

Then I went to wander around the old city a bit. I had a couple goals in mind; first of all, I needed a new camera memory card (didn’t find one here). But secondly, I needed some cheap sandals as I forgot to pack mine and I wasn’t going to wear black leather bootees with shorts. I’m not completely fashion-ignorant! So after checking in several way-too-high-end shoestores (€80 on average) I found a sufficiently-plebian shoestore for my purposes and bought a pair of nice-looking tan sandals for like €15 or something. They’re thin as paper and only slightly better than going barefoot, particularly on cobbles, but they got the job done. I also looked for a new summer dress, but I didn’t find one (still haven’t found one, not that I’m looking very hard at the moment).

Not the only ice cream ad I saw set up, but one of the nicest.

During my wanders, I accidentally made it over to the back of ‘new’ City Hall, up and down many narrow cobbled streets, through a bunch of those interesting shopping ‘passages’, into a goth fashion store, to an ATM that gave me Euros (finally didn’t have to use my credit card for everything as I had been hitherto), to a grocery store where I bought some bread and cheese and cherry tomatoes for lunches, through the market square. I also wandered into the Lindt shop, which of course is Swiss not German, but that was a (really good) mistake as it smelled so good of course I bought something (for my parents). The salesperson was very kind, and may or may not have been low-key flirting with me, and he sneaked a free chocolate into my bag. Or maybe he did that for everyone. I don’t know! But he was nice to interact with.

A neat house spotted while traversing the above itinerary.

Statue of Goethe, beside the old town hall/market hall.

I also, before meeting up with the rest of the choir for dinner, visited the Bach museum, which was across the street from the Thomaskirche. It was pretty neat, talking about what the area looked like in his time, playing recordings of some of his music, showing some of the many copies of his most popular portrait, discussing whether or not the bones interred under the Thomaskirche sanctuary are actually his (good likelihood, but we don’t know 100% actually) (there’s a small chance people reverently sing Bach’s music to some random Johann who just happened to be buried in the same unmarked place as Bach when they went looking for him).

After a time, the choir met up and walked to our dinner location, which was another cellar restaurant – beneath the ‘new’ town hall! This one was weird in a lot of ways. First of all, it was massive – chambers on chambers, some private, some public, some with bars in them; secondly, it had a lot of faux-medieval decor (terrible suits of armour, fake weapons mounted on the walls, etc.); thirdly, there was a weird swanky gift shop of high-end decor items near the front door; fourthly, the ladies’ washroom that I used had a lot of gilded decor and such amenities not just as handsoap, but… like… hairspray. !!!?? Extra mile, I guess. Anyway, dinner was almost the same as the day before, but the meat was beef stuffed with pickles, so I enjoyed it a lot more.

Next stop: Krakow!